Alright. I dont consider myself a journalist. And nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer, even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . Pres. Trump mad dog plays no games, right . David most of the people that i in this series are people ive known quite some time. In the case of jim mattis, i had never met the man before. Because of his nickname, mad dog, i thought uhoh, i better be careful when i shake his hand. He might be growling or mad at me or Something Like that. But actually, it was the opposite. I recognized quickly he has a certain reserve and a manner that would make a person want to follow him as a leader in the military, and also i suspect that had he never gone into the military, had he been in business or politics, he would have been successful there as well. Although i only spent this one hour with him in the interview, i really think he is a person who has Great Potential to again be a great leader in our country. And i dont think weve heard the last of jim mattis. Youre minding your own business after having spent 40plus years in the marines. Youre out in your native state, washington, and you get a call from Vice President elect pence to come and meet donald trump, whom you had never met before. What did you think that meeting was about, and do you have any regrets about going to the meeting or [laughter] your decision to actually become secretary of defense . Gen. Mattis i dont live a life with regrets. I would tell you that if youre enjoying life, and its shortly after an election and the phone rings, dont answer the phone, obviously. [laughter] but on a more serious note, i was brought up by the greatest generation, and i was brought up to believe that Government Service is an honor. Its a privilege. But its a duty. Whether its the president of the United States asking you, whether theyre a republican or democrat, doesnt matter, as long as youre prepared to do it, as long as you know you can do it, then the response is affirmative. David ok, so you took the job, but you resigned after a few years over a policy disagreement. Any regrets about having resigned . Gen. Mattis as youll all understand, ladies and gentlemen, these are the finest young patriots in our country signing that blank check payable to all of us with their lives, the men and women of our military. And i loved being back around them. Its probably the best job i couldve imagined. I only miss being around those people. There just comes a time i dont live a life of regrets there comes a time when you know what youve got to do. David so, you dont ever look back . Gen. Mattis no, i look forward. Im like dallas. [applause] david i wish i could do that. I always look back at the deals i shouldve done and i missed. I wish i had that same ability. But ok. [laughter] so, you disagreed with President Trump on syria. Let me ask you, i realize you have been very, very careful about not criticizing President Trump at all since you have left, in any public forum, so im not probably going to persuade you to do so here, not that you want to do so. But the reason that you want to be not commenting on your service as secretary of defense or saying anything negative about President Trump is what . Is it because youre a former cabinet officer, former military person, or just generally think its just not a good policy to do that . Gen. Mattis i resigned over a policy disagreement, youre right. I put that disagreement in a pageandahalf letter. The letters been released, thats all the more i need to say about it. The french call it a devoir de reserve, a duty of reserve, a duty of quiet. You dont need to have a former secretary of defense talking about the current policies in a way thats injurious to the country. And i would point out that secretary ash carter, my predecessor under the obama administration, said the same thing when he would respond to a congressional question that he considered political, even while he was there. So its not unique to me, is my point. Its not some sort of protective effort around President Trump. David do you feel, lets say years down the road, you might feel better about commenting on this . Gen. Mattis its a good question, david, but like most of us in this room, im from the west, as well, and there is something we call your ride for the brand. I could always come out and say on this policy or strategy, heres where i come down. Thats not meant as personal or political attack, and i dont feel that i need to be silent about those things after that president leaves office. But while the president is there, the last thing we want to do is to have the former secretary of defense coming out, saying, i disagree with a certain policy. Guess what . The president is still the commanderinchief, as elected by the american people, and the troops have to obey him. The last thing you want to do is you have the troops saying, well, the former secretary of defense doesnt agree with that policy. Thats why i dont talk about it while theyre in office. David so, does President Trump call you for advice anymore or not so much . Gen. Mattis no, the phone hasnt rang on that one. [laughter] david alright. Now, youve recently come out with a book, call sign chaos, with bing west, and its a terrific book. I highly recommend it. So, explain what call sign chaos means, for those who havent read the book. What does chaos mean there . Gen. Mattis so, i was a colonel out in the mojave desert, and i had an Operations Officer from brooklyn with a rather droll sense of humor. One day, i was done with one of my Brilliant Ideas talking to my Operations Officer of this regiment of about 7000 sailors and marines out in the mojave desert, and i saw on his whiteboard chaos written, and i said, whats that about . He said, oh, dont worry about that. You dont need to know about that. I say, oh, yes i do. [laughter] i used some of my powers of persuasion. I waterboarded him. [laughter] i found out my irreverent subordinates had decided that my call sign should be chaos. Colonel has another outstanding suggestion. [laughter] it was rather tongueincheek. They didnt see the brilliance of all of my ideas that i identified. So i adopted that as my call sign. Any time you hear about this mad dog thing, my troops all laughed at it, knowing my call sign was chaos. That was never my favorite nickname that the press assigned me on a slow news day. David well, lets talk about that. Gen. Mattis no, id rather not, actually. [laughter] david in this book, you never used the expression mad dog, you never described how you got that. You obviously dont like it. I would think that being mad dog shows that youre tough and so forth. Why dont you like it or use it . Is that right . Gen. Mattis first, the marines teach you to be tough in other ways than selfaggrandizing and stuff like that. [applause] but i think, too one thing that ive had to do, and youll all understand this, is sign a lot of nextofkin letters, and the last thing they need is to think theres someone with some selfimage of mad dog up there with their sons lives, basically, in his hands. So, i shy away from those words very much. David you signed more than 800 of those letters . Gen. Mattis i have. David so, that must be the most difficult thing to do, to write to the nextofkin that their son or daughter has been killed. Gen. Mattis its difficult for me. Its nowhere near what the families go through. David so, youve been very involved in meeting with gold star families since you retired, and that must be an Emotional Experience to do that. Gen. Mattis i think its necessary that we pay our respects and we never forget the sacrifices of those families. When you think this great big experiment that we have, that you and i call america, its going to need to be defended, and were going to continue to need this sort of commitment, this devotion to our country. David your first time in real combat is when Saddam Hussein invades kuwait. When you got into kuwait relatively quickly, were you surprised at how, relatively speaking, it was easy to get there . Gen. Mattis it was a lot of training, a lot of fire support. And it was im very proud of that campaign, because it was the last time i brought everyone home alive. David so, when you started your life, you started in the northwest, washington state, and you were a great athlete or a great student, or which would you say . Gen. Mattis none of the above. David neither. [laughter] but you were a little bit wild. You would do things that today i would think parents wouldnt let kids do. When you were 13 years old, your parents would let you hitchhike around the west, is that right . Gen. Mattis well, i maintained a degree of silence about some of my activities around my parents. [laughter] but yeah, i did start hitchhiking. I think it was a more trusting nation in those days. My parents were rather adventurous. They werent irresponsible, and had they known some of this, they probably wouldve put the kabosh on it. David so, how did you actually come to the marines . Did you say, im going to be drafted. Id rather be in the marines than the army . Or did you, like my father, my father went in the marines and he said, i like the uniform. Its a great uniform. Im going to go in the marines. What was it that appealed to you . Gen. Mattis well, one thing was, i probably wouldve been drafted. It was during that era. But it was almost, a little bit unexamined. It was more or less just assumed that if you went into the military, a lot of the guys in my neighborhood, my older brother was in vietnam as a marine. It was just kind of a natural thing. It wasnt a very reflective or examined decision. David ok, so, you go into the marines. Now, what was your first assignment after you left officer training . Gen. Mattis it was the best assignment i had in the military. It was Second Lieutenant in the infantry. You have about 40 sailors and marines, and theres nobody between you and your troops. Youre living right amongst them. You know them as well as you know your brothers. You can spot them 200 yards away by their walk. You know who they are. Its just a great, tightknit crew. David ok, so your first time in real combat is when Saddam Hussein invades kuwait, and president bush 41, decides that the United States is going to have a response. [video] pres. Bush now, the 28 countries have no choice but to drive saddam from kuwait by force. We will not fail. David what was your involvement, and what did you do in that war . Gen. Mattis i commanded an infantry battalion. I was in the first marine division. And those of you who remember the war, you remember the big minefields and the trenches of oil and all that sort of stuff, barbed wire. And my battalion job was to open two of the routes through for the marines to follow. David and did you think at the time, there were predictions there would be tens of thousands of american troops killed. When you got into kuwait relatively quickly, were you surprised at how, relatively speaking, it was easy to get in there . Gen. Mattis it was a lot of training and a lot of fire support. And it was im very proud of that campaign because it was the last time i brought everyone home alive. David ok. You were an officer when that occurred. When youre an officer, you get special treatment when youre in that kind of combat . Do you sleep in the same place as the troops, or do you get a better place to sleep or better food . How do you treat your troops . Gen. Mattis no, in the infantry, you always eat last, you never live better than the troops. Matter of fact, even when i was a twostar general, we established whats called the level of comfort for a 23,000man division, which is whatever an infantry lance corporal, which is what a very young troop has. If he has nothing but a blanket to lay in, nobody has anything but a blanket except the wounded and the sick. And those, we do everything we can for. But everybody lives like a lance corporal. David so the food that you eat, mre food, is it any good, or not so great when youre in combat . Gen. Mattis lets just say its not quite as good as the meal we had today, david. [laughter] david eventually, you got back into combat again because 9 11 occurs. So, your next assignment is to go into afghanistan and try to capture, i assume, Osama Bin Laden, is that right . More or less . So, in the end, you go over there, you have all the troops. And why did you not capture Osama Bin Laden . Gen. Mattis i had an admiral who had read a lot of history. And he said, no ones held kabul in 500 years. Theyre going to fall back to kandahar, their spiritual home, and dig in. Can you get the marines from the mediterranean fleet and Pacific Fleet together, this threestar admiral asked me i was a one star marine and move against kandahar . I said, yeah, i can do that. So, we got the troops in. And then the Intelligence Agency said Osama Bin Laden was in one of two valleys. They were very sure of this. They had him pinpointed. So, i had a real quick computer study done, and i knew what mountains on the pakistan border, if you put troops on them, could see each other and block the two valleys. And then i was going to move my troops up the two valleys, but i changed from navy commandandcontrol to army commandandcontrol, and i had not spent the time getting to know my boss 900 miles away, and we missed the opportunity. The person who made the mistake was me. I just assumed, because we were there to go after this guy, that everybody was attuned to the intel. You shouldnt make assumptions like that when your organization is shifting and adapting. David they told you to pull back . Gen. Mattis well, they didnt tell me to go. We didnt pull back, but we didnt go in. David ok, so ultimately you leave afghanistan and come back to the United States again. Gen. Mattis right. David but then youre asked to go into another war in iraq. Gen. Mattis right. David so you get in there, and then ultimately the fights between the sunnis and the shiites turned out to be much more than anybody anticipated. As you look back on the political problems that arose in iraq, subsequent to Saddam Hussein having been captured, what do you think was the mistake that was made, or what could have been done better in hindsight . Gen. Mattis you know, its interesting to get the question, look back in hindsight, but let me tell you what it looked like in foresight. Were in, basically, the summer, a very hot summer of 2003, and iraq has fallen. And in one of my briefs one day, a young officer who was briefing said, by the way, the enemy is picking this up that somehow were going to disband the iraqi army. We were just bringing the army, the iraqis back into the barracks. We were starting to pay them, trying to talk with them that we werent here to occupy or humiliate you. You worked for a jerk, hes gone, youre going to be the new iraqi army. And i dismissed it as idle gossip and said forget that. Lets get on with the brief. Next day i walk in, and everybodys quiet in this great big cavernous palace wed taken over. The lieutenant down there had a piece of paper for me and it had three sentences, the iraqi army is hereby disbanded. The first lieutenant, fresh out of his undergraduate days, said, general, we just started an insurgency. Thats what it looked like in foresight. Didnt take hindsight to see the problem. David ultimately, when the insurgency occurred, you were trying to, at one point capture fallujah among other things, but you found there wasnt enough Political Support to go and do the tough things you thought the military needed to do, is that right . Gen. Mattis well, we had a troop cap put on us, so we didnt have enough troops. For example, i was responsible for an area about the size of north carolina, and i had about 15,000, 16,000 troops to try to control it. Just do the math on the geography, you can see the problem. Then we had four contractors who were misguided. They drove into fallujah without checking in with the marines who were in the area. And these guys, unfortunately, drove into town, right into the heart of town, and they were murdered by some of the tribes there, by the terrorists. And their bodies were desecrated, and, i mean, it was not pretty. And we were ordered to go in. I said ive got a better idea. We were told, no, after a couple of days you will assault the city. So, we had to move the innocent people out and then go after the terrorists, and i didnt have many troops i could throw into the attack. I said ok, were going to do it, but dont stop me now that were going to do it. Unfortunately, they stopped us while we were deep in the city and housetohouse fighting, so it was a very difficult time for the marines. David would you go back into government again, or are you done with Government Service . Gen. Mattis i mean, i grew up in a country that when the country calls, you do it. David as being former secretary of defense in more than 40 years in the marine corps, today, what do you think are the one or two most Important NationalSecurity Issues this country faces, leaving aside whoevers president . What do you think are the most Important NationalSecurity Issues and challenges . Gen. Mattis when i came into office, i was working alongside a son of texas, secretary rex tillerson. And together, we determined that we needed to rework the strategy. In my case, it was the National Defense strategy. And that strategy basically said were going to have to continue to deal with the terrorist threat. Its an ambient threat. Its just going to be out there. But the primary threats to the country, to go to your question, david, are clearly authoritarian regimes that are acting badly. And in terms of urgency, it would be north korea. In terms of power, it would be russia. And in terms of political will, it would be china. Were going to have to address those, so we wrote a strategy accordingly. David when do yo